Cat/Kitten people - have yours ever 'gone off' certain brands of food?

We have to rota what food our cat has, she's a snooty bugger. She does love the kitten James Wellbeloved. She wont eat any fishy cat foods. Wont eat a whole can of wet food (but will eat a whole foil carton (not the pouches))

1) Yes I have, but that's more that she's become bored with the food or more likely the brand. I found with Whiskers food she got bored quite quickly and wouldn't eat it.

2) I give her Royal Canin, but there are many good dry foods out there. Science Plan is quite popular too, as is Iams.

BTW - cats are like any animal in that once you offer them something they tend to expect it everytime....something like if you give a dog a tit-bit just once off the table it comes back every meal time as it will expect the same and slobber over your shoes! And if I'm honest, your caving in and giving him some as he hasn't eaten his biscuits isn't going to help if you want him to have just biscuits. If you want, try different dry foods but also try introducing wet food into his diet everyday. That way, he can chose if he wants to eat wet, dry or both. You will probably find that after a while he will get used to having both.

Our cat ate Whiskas kitten food for about a week before deciding he wouldn't touch it, a real pain as it was 3 boxes for £6 in Asda at the time so we'd stocked up! He only likes Felix. Cats are unlike dogs - I believe that with dogs, they will eventually eat when they are hungry enough but cats just won't.

our cat has wet food every day (he's just over a year) and has biscuits all the time for snacking, same with my parents' cat who is 12 years old and (touches wood) fairly healthy, I'm not sure why it's harmful?

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Lucy was like that too...she'd only eat Felix! And now I've had to give here Kitekat as I can't find Felix here. I only used the analogy of a dog at a table because it's a learned behaviour that it now expected to be repeated, and you are right, most cats won't eat out of stuborness.

Our 3 prefer Felix pouches (They have 4 between them in two meals a day) and they also prefer Purina Pro-Plan or One as dried food. Dried food is always available for them with water as a snack, they get fed wet food first thing in the morning and at about 6 every evening. They are picky though sometimes. We tried them on Go-cat wet food for a very short while and decided they didnt like it, so refused to eat at all. They will have some Whiskers wet food from a pouch now and again, but they always eat Felix, as its their fave.

LIke bookgirl my cat (long time ago) decided about 3 days after I'd taken out a mortgage to stock up on Sheba (hey, I was young) that it was quite literally poo, and would do that whole trying to bury it thing.

Our Oz eats complete biscuits too, he usually has a couple of different bags on the go at the time. He likes the James Wellbeloved range and so we get him the senior whitefish ones, the senior turkey ones and the senior duck ones. Then just pick up the bags randomly come feeding time so he doesn't get the same flavour each time. It seems to work out well and he seems to wolf them down quite happily.

Also if you're feeding dry biscuits it's important to make sure that there is plenty of fresh water on offer, we've found (after reading it on here actually) that our cat does prefer a larger bowl of water so we've got a couple of dog sized water bowls for him and it seems to be going down well. Plus we've got another bowl of water for him up in our bathroom which he tends to use during the night...we rather do that than he help himself to our glasses of water as he had taken to doing previously. It's fair enough really we do live in a three storey house and he is getting on a bit now.

Ours have a similar routine to WT's. We switched to Iams Senior after christmas as our cats are 10 and 6, but it makes the older one puke, so we're back on regular after less than one bag lol. They MUCH prefer Felix, and seem to be getting on ok with the senior version, won't touch the 'roasted' version though for some unknown reason. They will eat Whiskas but only at a push, and won't tolerate it for long! They always have dry food and water available, although niether will drink from the bowl, one prefers the tap, the other I've never seen drink come to think of it! They both suppliment their diets with 'free range' products they aquire themselves (which means my food bills go up in winter along with everything else).

It is very common for cats to prefer wet food to dry food, and they are good at manipulating owners to get what they want. Essentially, wet food smells better. If you go for good complete foods like James Wellbeloved, these have a higher meat content than the cheaper brands, also the cat needs to eat a lot less of them.

Also, don't give your cat a lot of tuna - other fish is better as tuna doesn't contain the nutrients a cat needs

L
xx

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I wasn't trying to dismiss your dog analogy - sorry if it sounded that way. Mine was a separate dog related behaviour! You're quite right in that dogs and cats will learn behaviour - my point was meant to be separate but i appreciate it didn't get phrased that way!

Archie only likes Felix too!

Cats will absolutely eat want you want them to in the end, it just takes longer than dogs because dogs are greedier!

My mum had to have an absolute stand off with her cat about eating special food when she had kidney problems. It took a couple of days but now she eats it fine.

Cats in the wild can easily go a few days without food, which probably means that they are more prepared to do that in a home situation.

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This is your problem LOL. Cats are very clever and can be manipulative. I have 3 of them. I have no chance!

Mine have dry food (either science plan or Royal Canin, or Nature's Best if they're lucky and it's on offer) with plenty of water. They have Felix pouches as their equivalent of junk food....eg as a treat - probably about once a week or more if I'm trying to hide tablets etc.

My cat has a mixture of both wet anddry foo.d He likes Whiskas but does goes through stages of what flavour he will or will not eat. At he moment he refuses to eat Beef or chicken flavour. On Monday I bought him the 'Oh so Fishy' type and he's been happily eating them all week, however yesurday he has two sachets of Haddack and was so sick, I've never seen so much vomit come out of something so small - literaly 8 big piles of the stuff, poor thing. He was feeling so sorry for himself all evening then come bedtime he thought it was time to play, so I knew then it was just the food. I've now decided to give him fish only now and again (my last cat used to throw up everytime she ate fish as well).

He has biscuits down at all times and I tend to get the good stuff (Purina I think it is) rather than the cheap stuff.

<whispers> I think I may have broken him - he has just this minute eaten a few biscuits....I win! ?

They are funny buggers aren't they. Loads of good advice here, thanks very much all. Today I'm going to go and get a couple of bags of good quality biscuits and alternate them, and persevere with the wet food as a treat every now and again, and lay off the tuna for a bit. I read somewhere that a can of tuna is the equivalent of giving a human 6 cheeseburgers or something, so we've tried to be quite frugal with it.

Thanks all x

Our cat has 3 small (very small actually, as she can't eat as much as a normal cat in one go) meals of wet food and a top up of biscuits to keep her going through the night.

She has very few teeth despite only being 3 (she's a wreck of a cat actually).

Why is it bad for her to have so much wet food?

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I wondered too, our 9 month cat has 2 felix pouches plus some biscuits everyday as we were recommended.

Am interested to hear they like bigger water bowls as Spice hardly drinks water at all.

DD xx

Dry food is better for their teeth as it helps to clean them when they crunch it. Apart from that I don't know why dry is better.

Our four felines have both wet and dried food put down for them everyday, along with plenty of fresh water. They are creatures of short-term habit ie will happily scoff one brand for a few days or even weeks, and then look at it as if I've placed a bowl of cyanide in front of them. Se we buy a mix of stuff and keep ringing the changes. They always like the Purina crunchies, tho.

Ours won't touch anything other than Felix either - 4 pouches a day between 2 of them over 2 meals - plus biccies and water!

I too am also interested in the dry vs wet debate. I was always told / read that with boy cats (as ours are), you need to give them a certain amount of wet food, as they are prone to UTI's etc, and without the wet food, they can get 'clogged up'; and that water alone was not enough to prevent that happening...

is that just an urban myth?!